Raptor Blue
by CameoAmalthea
Summary: The story of a young raptor. An homage to Robert T. Bakker's "Raptor Red" set pre-Jurassic World.
1. Chapter 1

**AN:** The style is meant to be evocative of Bakker's and with the first paragraph deliberately mirroring the opening of Bakker's work. This copying is not meant as plagiarism, and I give Bakker full credit. I can only hope this work captures the spirit of his, a raptor's story from her own point of view.

If you haven't read it, I encourage you all to track down a copy.

* * *

A pair of fierce but beautiful eyes blink in the light, not sunlight, but the cold artificial white light of a Jurassic World hatchery. The eyes look upward as she pushes her way out of the shell, above her is a low glass ceiling, the lid of an incubator that was automatically raised when the eggs showed signs of movement. The eyes belong to a baby raptor, a female who is the first of the clutch to hatch.

The nest in which she is born exists is more akin to a laboratory than a nesting ground. She sniffs the air but cannot catch an organic scent, her nose overwhelmed by the sterile scent of alcohol. She continues to sniff all the same, trying to catch the scent of others like her, as her eyes continue search for her parents.

Raptor chicks are helpless when they hatch, and rely entirely on the protection of their parents and flock. Even now, born million of years away from a time where her kind lived and bred, the need for the nurturing touch of her mother is written in her DNA, as her need for food. She is born hungry and lonely, her shrill cries are calls for help.

If the chick could put her thoughts into a human language, the might be: _Mommy? Where are you? Here I am mommy! Hungry! I need you._

"Why didn't you tell me they were hatching?" asks a man rushing into the lab. He is not dressed in a white sterile lab coat, but a simple shirt and cargo pants.

When he leans over the nest, she catches the scent of dirt and the salt of his skin. His flesh is the first real, organic scent she's caught. While the chick does not understand the human's words, her only focus is on him.

"We weren't sure when they'd all hatch or how many would be viable. We were going call you once we'd transferred the healthy chicks to the nursery," says one of the hatchery's attendants from behind her clipboard. The chick cannot smell her, she is not close and her scent is masked behind latex gloves, a plastic head cap, and disinfectant. "We'll need to weigh her and take her vitals."

"Can it wait?" asks the man. His name is Owen Grady. He is an animal behaviorist. Guided by the works of Dr. Harding and Dr. Grant, he has come to theorize the existence of a strong familial bond between raptors beginning the moment the chicks hatch and, like some modern birds, imprint on the first thing they see.

He brings his face close to hers, their eyes locked on each other. He reaches out to touch her, stroking her neck. She trills a happy purring sound, and then screeches again and opens her mouth like a young bird waiting for food. Owen reaches into his backpack and retrieves a bag of fruit beetle grubs, specially raised and fed to be stuffed full of nutrients. He picks up the grubs one by one with feeding tongs and offers them to the chick.

"Mr. Grady?" asks the scientist.

"These first moments are critical," he says. "I don't know how much you know about the first raptors humans tried to raise in captivity."

"I'm familiar with the Jurassic Park incident," she replies.

Owen continues to feed the chick as he speaks, staying close to her. The close presence of another warm living thing comforts the young raptor as much as the food he is giving her.

"I mean how they were raised, one at a time, separate, never socialized with each other or people. Any bonds they formed as chicks were broken since it was a team of scientists handling them. Even before the park lost power, there were problems. The majority of the raptors they bred were killed by the big female before they ever had a chance to escape."

"Isn't violence common in nature?" she asks.

"Depends on what animals," he replies, "'course there's nothing like them living, but when you look at pack hunters with complex social structures you don't see mass killings. Male lions will fight for dominance, kill rival's cubs to bring the lionesses into heat, but aside from changes in dominant males the pride is cohesive. In wolves, there's no such thing as an alpha subduing the pack trough strength, the leaders are the ones who take care of the others."

"So you think by becoming their leader, you can tame them?"

"No, trained isn't the same as tame," he says, "A falconer might train a bird to kill for him, but it'll never be tamed. These animals are killers, and once they're bigger one wrong move-" He trails off, and strokes chick's neck again once she's had her fill. "Up 'til now raptors have been deemed too aggressive to be put on display, but maybe if I raise 'em right they'll be manageable. At least for me."

"I'll leave you too it then," she says, "but I will need to give her a check up eventually. For now, subject Bravo appears healthy."

"Bravo?" he asks.

"You'll be their Alpha, we've named the rest alphabetically. She's the first; we'll name them as they come. We've selected for a range of color variations, so you'll be able to tell them apart. She the stripe on her side."

"Bravo the blue," he says, "my little Blue."

The chick nuzzled against him then stands, stumbling towards Owen on unsteady legs. He picks her up gingerly and holds her close. She takes in his scent fully, comforted it by it. The raptor has imprinted on his face and will memorize ever detail of Owen, the way he smells, and the sound of his voice. _Mommy is here. I love you, Mommy._


	2. Chapter 2

The chick shares her nursery box with two others – they do not smell quite like her. Because they are together, she assumes they are her nest mates and should be part of her. She is aware of herself as _me_ , raptor blue, and those who share her blood are _part of me_. Families bonds tied through an instinctive genetic link, as much nature as nurture, but her nest mates do not smell right.

What the young raptor does not know and cannot understand is that she and her nest mates were engineered by splicing the genes of different reptiles into each hatchling to create different colors and patterns. "So the trainers can recognize individuals," Dr. Wu had explained.

Although Dr. Wu understands genetics, he does not know that when Owen trained dolphins for the Navy he knew each of them by sight by simply paying attention and learning their features as surely as their personalities. This was no special ability on Owen's part, but the skill of anyone who knows animals as he does. Dr Vessa, a leading marine biologist who dedicated her life to studying Killer Whales, can readily identify most of New Zealand's wild Orcas on sight – to her each animal is an individual with a unique appearance, personality, story and name. Dr. Wu knows the building blocks of animals down to which gene corresponds to which trait, but he has never known an animal as an individual so it never occurred to him such genetic tampering might be unnecessary.

Raptor Blue's was given the genes of a blue-throated monitor lizard, it's genetics granting her the iridescent stripe that would become her name sake. There was a second purpose to the extra genes. Years ago, when Jurassic Park first opened, they used frog DNA to complete the genetic code of their animals and by some fluke of the coding the dinosaurs whose ancient counterparts had feathers were born with scales. Back then nobody noticed the mistake because nobody knew better. By now the mistake was obvious, not just from the fossil record but from what InGen itself had learned as they acquired more DNA and came to better understand the creatures they were making in their labs. Now they spliced their theropods with reptiles to ensure none would have feathers.

"Giants birds aren't cool, or scary. People expect dinosaurs to be like in the cartoons they grew up watching." The late John Hammond would have insisted on authenticity; that they give their visitors the real thing or as close as they could possibly get. Simon Masrani just wanted his guests to be happy, and if that meant bringing their childhood memories of "The Land Before Time" to life he was happy to approve of herbivores engineered to be docile and non territorial so the duckbills, three horns, long necks and spike tails could all live together happily in a Great Valley of his own creation. Jurassic World would certainly not ruin anyone's childhood by introducing a feathered covered T-Rex, especially when the Park's Original was already on hand.

Raptor Blue looks exactly like a raptor should like to according to human sensibilities of what makes a scary dinosaur. Human sensibilities engrained by pop culture and perhaps their own genetics – an encoded fear of reptiles left over from when human's early ancestors were preyed on my snakes and lizards on the savannas of Africa where humankind first evolved. As for Blue's sensibilities, she feels cold and tries to tuck her head under a wing that isn't there when she sleeps.

Owen comes with another human, and drapes a shirt over the hatchlings. Unlike the things the lab provides, it is not sterile or clean. He's worn it for two days straight without washing it so it would absorb his scent. Blue snuggles into, glad for the extra warmth and the comfort of his scent.

Mother does not smell like part of her either, but she cannot dispute mother looks after her and even if the one who share her nest smell wrong they are her nest mates and their cries sound the same as hers. Perhaps what is part of her is not defined by scent or similarities in size and shape but other cues. In sound and action, bonds driven by familiarity. Close enough instead of truly close, but this is all she has and all she knows. So she sleeps, head tucked under the shirtsleeves instead of wings.


End file.
